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Swarm Intelligence

Posted by michael on from the alfred-hitchcock dept.

elamdaly writes "Eric Bonabeau, Ph.D, a keynote speaker at the upcoming Emerging Technology conference, is a leader in the field of swarm intelligence and has focused on applying these concepts to real world problems such as factory scheduling and telecommunications routing. The concept itself is borrowed from nature; in this interview, that's where the conversation begins, with ants and other social insects. Dr. Bonabeau takes us from his childhood nightmares of carnivorous wasps to applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world."

2 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Mythical man month by MxTxL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I got to thinking about this real quick and, as i'm too lazy to read the actual interview and it's probably addressed there, what are the effects of diminishing returns?

    The 'mythical man month' basically says that one programmer (or other worker) can produce more in one month than two workers each working half a month... who can do more than three workers all in 1/3 of a month. And further that just throwing more people at a problem doesn't really do much past a certain point. For some problems, it might be the case that one guy working for a month can do more than ten guys working for the same period of time.

    How does swarm behavior overcome all of this great stuff?

    I presume that it must be an essential part of the deal that the problem must be something very trivial for there to be great effects by swarming.

  2. I can't belive I'm quoting a shirt... by superspoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Never underestimate the power of stupid people on large groups"

    --


    YarrRrr